1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to an engine for a watercraft, and more particularly to mount for mounting engine components to an engine with separate cylinder bodies.
2. Description of Related Art
Personal watercraft have become popular in recent years. This type of watercraft is sporty in nature; it turns swiftly, is easily maneuverable, and accelerates quickly. Personal watercraft today commonly carry one driver and one or two passengers and include a hull which defines an interior engine compartment for housing an engine. The output shaft of the engine is coupled to a water propulsion device of the watercraft, such as a jet propulsion unit. An internal combustion engine is commonly used to power the personal watercraft. Typically, the engine is an in-line, multi-cylinder, two-cycle engine.
The engine includes a cylinder block that defines one or more cylinder bores. The number of cylinder bores corresponds to the desired number of cylinders. The cylinder bores are often lined with steel by pressing a steel sleeves into each cylinder bore. The cylinder bore and steel sleeve together define a cylinder in which a piston reciprocates.
Instead of using steel sleeves to line the cylinder bore, engine manufacturers have recently begun to plate the cylinder bores with a suitable material such as a Nickel alloy. However, engine manufacturers have found it difficult to simultaneously plate multiple cylinder bores when multiple cylinder bores are formed in a single cylinder block. In contrast, it is much easier to plate a single cylinder bore that is contained within it's own separate body. Engine manufacturers have therefore created engines with separate cylinder bodies for each cylinder bore in order to ease the manufacturing process.
Using separate cylinder bodies in an engine has additional advantages over conventional engine blocks. For example, because cylinder bodies are modular and can be combined to form one, two, three or four cylinder engines, they can be mass produced.
There are, however, disadvantages associated with using separate cylinder bodies. For example, in traditional engines the engine block provided a convenient secure place to mount heavy engine components. In comparison, mounting heavy engine components onto separate cylinder bodies can cause uneven loading of a cylinder body with respect to the other cylinder bodies. This uneven loading can cause a cylinder body to twist with respect to the other cylinder bodies and the crankshaft thereby causing damage to other engine components such as the pistons, the crankshaft, and crankcase.